This invention relates to a device for detecting the amount of bend in a shaft such as a grindstone shaft, and particularly to a device which can detect the bending magnitude in a shaft with high precision.
Hitherto, in order to find such quantities as the grinding resistance acting on a shaft on the end of which a grindstone is fitted, or a so-called grindstone shaft, a device which detects the bending magnitude of the shaft has been used. This kind of device has a target integrally mounted in the outer surface of the shaft and first and second coils connected to each other in series, and the target comprises a laminated electromagnetic steel plate. The first coil is mounted close to the outer surface of the shaft and facing the target, and the second coil is disposed in such a way that it faces the first coil through the target and the shaft. These coils are formed in such a way that they both have substantially the same inductance.
This bending magnitude detecting device is constructed in such a way that when the shaft bends while a high frequency voltage is being applied across the first and second coils, it can detect the actual bending magnitude of the shaft by wave-detecting and rectifying an output signal which is produced at the series connection point of the two coils and whose absolute value corresponds to the bending magnitude of the shaft.
However, in this kind of conventional bending magnitude detecting device, i.e. in devices which use two coils to detect the bending magnitude of a shaft, even when a target of laminated electromagnetic steel plate is mounted integrally with the shaft as described above, due to hysteresis loss and eddy current loss caused by the high frequency excitation voltage, etc., especially when the bending range of the shaft is located in the vicinity of the center of both the coils and the bending magnitude is extremely small, the occurrence of a residual voltage in the coils is unavoidable. Because it is impossible to completely eliminate this residual voltage, in the characteristic of the output signal obtained from the series connection point of the two coils, as shown in FIG. 6(a), in the range [a] where the bending magnitude is extremely small, there is no linearity. In the characteristic of the wave-detected output signal obtained when this output signal is wave-detected and rectified, as shown in FIG. 6(b), in the range [a] where the bending magnitude is extremely small, changes in the magnitude of the wave-detected output signal are much smaller than changes in the magnitude of the bending. In other words, because the precision of the wave-detected output signal becomes coarse, it is impossible to detect the bending magnitude with high precision. Furthermore, because a laminated electromagnetic steel plate target for detecting the bending magnitude is incorporated into the shaft as an extra component, such problems as the added weight on the shaft increasing and the bending resonance frequency of the shaft falling, and, in order to prevent the target material being destroyed by centrifugal force, it not being possible to rotate the shaft at high speeds, have arisen.
When, in order to make it possible for the shaft to rotate at high speeds, the laminated electromagnetic steel plate target is removed. In other words when the shaft itself (integrated material of quenched steel) is made the target, there has been the problem that because, compared with the case in which the laminated electromagnetic steel plate target is provided, hysteresis loss and eddy current loss caused by the high frequency excitation voltage, etc., become even greater, and the residual voltage mentioned above becomes very large, the bending magnitude detection precision becomes much worse.